Staff Full Stack Software Engineer (Backend) - Time Off Products

About Rippling

Rippling gives businesses one place to run HR, IT, and Finance. It brings together all of the workforce systems that are normally scattered across a company, like payroll, expenses, benefits, and computers. For the first time ever, you can manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle in a single system.

Take onboarding, for example. With Rippling, you can hire a new employee anywhere in the world and set up their payroll, corporate card, computer, benefits, and even third-party apps like Slack and Microsoft 365—all within 90 seconds.

Based in San Francisco, CA, Rippling has raised $1.4B+ from the world’s top investors—including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Sequoia, Greenoaks, and Bedrock—and was named one of America's best startup employers by Forbes.

We prioritize candidate safety. Please be aware that all official communication will only be sent from @Rippling.com addresses.

About the Role:

We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join our Time Off Products team, where you’ll lead a team of engineers to build critical products that empower companies to manage their workforce on a global scale. We are seeking a technical leader to continue growing the team and technical vision.

While you’ll be working on one of Rippling's most used products already, Time Products is currently one of the company's highest priorities and is projected to grow 4-5x in daily active users in the next year. You will need to design systems and collaborate with the data infrastructure team to ensure our technical systems can scale with our business needs. Additionally, at the core of Time Off is an "accruals" rules engine. We are looking for a product thinker to partner closely with our Product Management team to continue designing these systems to scale to all countries in the world and all legal jurisdictions.

We expect this Staff engineer to design the primitives of these systems and to make them auditable and explainable both in its architectural choices and through the use of LLMs in the product. These systems are critically important as they help users manage time away from work during the most important times of their lives. This team is at the heart of Rippling’s future. As a Staff Engineer, you’ll be a central figure in shaping the future of our products and how we scale our impact worldwide.

What You’ll Do:

• Build & Innovate: Write scalable code while driving the architecture of our most critical products. You’ll play a key role in defining the technical vision and ensuring the quality of the solutions we ship.
• Set the Bar for Engineering Excellence: As a senior technical leader, you’ll set the standards for high-quality software. You’ll help the team move quickly without sacrificing reliability or security, ensuring that Rippling’s products remain fast, efficient, and reliable at scale.
• Lead Design & Architecture: Own and guide the technical design of new features, ensuring they’re both innovative and aligned with the company’s long-term goals. Collaborate with engineers across teams to ensure we’re solving the right problems.
• Mentor & Elevate the Team: Guide and mentor junior engineers, helping them grow technically and professionally. Lead by example in delivering results and foster a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration.
• Drive Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate with product managers, designers, and other teams to prioritize and refine our product roadmap. Your deep technical knowledge will help turn customer feedback into robust, high-quality engineering solutions.

What You’ll Need:

• Experience: A minimum 7 years of hands-on backend engineering experience using Python, Django, or similar technologies in building production-grade systems.
• Deep Technical Expertise: Strong computer science fundamentals with experience designing and optimizing complex systems that operate at scale. You’re comfortable solving technical challenges at both the micro and macro levels.
• Product-Oriented Mindset: You care about more than just code—you understand the product, user experience, and design. You’re quick to spot opportunities for improvement and take initiative to make those changes.
• Entrepreneurial Spirit: You thrive in ambiguous, fast-paced environments and are driven to identify and solve big, impactful problems. Your ability to adapt and innovate allows you to navigate complex technical and organizational challenges.
• Leadership: You’ve led technical design discussions and collaborated cross-functionally to build robust, scalable systems. You’re not just a coder—you’re a mentor, a collaborator, and a leader who elevates the entire team.